JORDAN RUDESS Says DREAM THEATER Doesn't Need To Work With Outside Producer

Jordan Rudess says that there are no plans for DREAM THEATER to work with an outside producer in the future.

Guitarist John Petrucci has produced, or co-produced, every DREAM THEATER album since the band's 1999 release, "Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From A Memory". It's an arrangement that has proven to be an enduring success, with DREAM THEATER's latest LP, "Distance Over Time", debuting at No. 24 on the Billboard 200 chart last month.

Asked by "Rock Talk With Mitch Lafon" if DREAM THEATER would consider using a producer on an upcoming album or the band is content keeping the reins in the studio, Rudess said (see video below): "We've really enjoyed self-producing. John's really great. He knows us all.

"We're a pretty complicated group of musicians in the sense that we do things that are not ordinary," the keyboardist continued. "We've been around for a long time. It's not a standard operation.

"One of the things that's been consistent about DREAM THEATER since the beginning, except for a few times in our career where we maybe felt a little different, is that we do what we want and we create our own unique blend of music. It's a little hard for us to accept somebody coming in from the outside world and telling us what to do, especially in the case where we've had a lot of success kind of doing our own thing."

Rudess added: "It might be fun at some point in the future to work with somebody else and have their take on what we do. I would respect an artist like Steven Wilson, who's my good friend, who's so musical… he's not gonna make anything bad happen, certainly. But does it need to happen? Do we need an outside producer? Not really, I don't think. I think there's enough freedom of ideas. A lot of the production role is organizational — making things happen, working with the record company on all the factors that go into having an album come out. And we do that pretty well ourselves."

"Distance Over Time" was released on February 22. The disc, which marks the band's first for their new label InsideOut Music, was mixed by Ben Grosse and mastered by Tom Baker.